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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181840">The Road From This Place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vachtar/pseuds/vachtar'>vachtar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftereffects of The Lonely, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, M/M, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:02:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181840</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vachtar/pseuds/vachtar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The would-be apocalypse went up in flames, and Jon and Martin are safely ensconced in the safehouse. Things are still a work in progress.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Road From This Place</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts">reine_des_corbeaux</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from The Loneliness And The Scream by Frightened Rabbit.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Jon? You alright?”</p><p>Jon’s shoulders flinch up at the sound, even though a split second later his mind registers <i>it’s just Martin</i> and settles uneasily. He turns back to the cottage. Martin’s leaned halfway out the door, his glasses crooked on his nose, hair a blustering tangle around his face. He used to keep it trimmed shorter, but the last year’s been hard on them both and now it curls around his ears and Jon has to restrain himself from brushing it back every time he sees it.</p><p>Except he doesn’t, does he? Martin’s chewing his chapped lower lip between anxious teeth, and Jon could just - just take the four long strides back to the cottage, run his thumb over that lip or the angle of Martin’s ear or, probably, anywhere else, and Martin would give him that watery smile he thinks he’s being sneaky about sending at Jon’s back all the time. It burns somewhere low in his throat, this possessive streak he doesn’t know what to do with. He wants to devour Martin whole, but Martin flinches when he so much as looks too hard.</p><p>It was easy in the Lonely, where he could see the path forward with blazing conviction. Tear Peter Lukas’s influence away from Martin, and tear Martin out of <i>someone else’s domain</i>, and then what? Daisy’s cottage feels stifling and cosseting all at once, and Martin keeps leaving the windows open so the cold Highland breezes can cut through them both.</p><p>“I’m alright,” he answers, too slow on his feet. Martin nods and glances back into the cottage.</p><p>“I made - food?” he offers. Stale pasta and a sauce cobbled together from a couple dented tins of tomatoes and a wilting pepper. Jon knows without asking.</p><p>“Oh. Uh, thank you, Martin,” he says. He’d been admiring the Highlands in autumn, the swathes of blazing trees blanketing hills and valleys. London in autumn was so much grey drizzle, Suddenly the cold air outside is unbearable; he wraps his pilfered jumper tighter around himself and trudges back to the cottage with heavy steps that sink halfway into the damp, loamy grass. Martin meets him at the door with a tight smile, a flickered glance over Jon’s shoulder like he’s expecting to see something there before he steps back to let him inside.</p><p>“It’s not a problem, really. Are you hungry?” Martin asks. It’s a stupid question. He is very, very hungry these days, and no amount of home-cooked food will sate it. But it’s good - it’s human - that Martin’s asking, and thinking about these things again. He kicks off his shoes and winces at the wet hems of his trousers.</p><p>“I...could eat.”</p><p>“Right. Well, uh - ” Martin aborts whatever he was going to say in favor of rounding the corner into the little half-kitchen. Basira had called this place a <i>safehouse</i>, and it lives up to the appellation, in that it’s got four walls and no one around to look too hard at the current residents, and it resembles nothing so much as a bland hideaway in some trashy action film. There’s a bedroom, with a bed big enough for two people to carefully avoid touching in, and a sitting room with a sofa and a vaguely alarming collection of airport novels stacked beside it. The kitchen has a small refrigerator and a hotplate and a kettle, and a pantry stocked with shelf-stable staples Martin’s been steadily making his way through. It’s exactly what he would’ve expected of Daisy, and Jon can’t picture her here at all; every time he thinks of her now, the memories are tainted with the Hunt.</p><p>On one of the pair of rickety shelves on the wall opposite is an old biscuit tin filled with flaky, fragile soot. A new addition; Martin put it up there, a couple days after. Jon doesn’t <i>look</i> at it but it still throbs in his awareness.</p><p>Martin pushes a plate of noodles and sauce into Jon’s hands, and sinks down on the sofa with his own. His solid shoulders are hunched over, like he’s bracing for a blow, and Jon doesn’t know how to handle this at all. He sits beside Martin with his legs crossed, leaving a little careful space between them.</p><p>“Probably have to go to the shops soon, we’re low on basically everything. Still tea left, at least,” says Martin. He’s awkwardly moving pasta around on his plate without actually eating, eyes half-shut and angled towards Jon. </p><p>“There’d better be, with how much you bought.” That wrings a laugh out of Martin, at least.</p><p>God, he’s terrible at this.</p><p>He’s terrible at this, and Martin’s still a ragged wound who can barely stand to be around other people, and they’ve been holed up in this cottage for weeks now and managed to talk about absolutely nothing they need to. Somehow everything was clearer in the Lonely, when he’d hauled Martin into his arms and felt him sobbing against his neck and knew that he wasn’t too far gone, that Jon still had him on some indelible level. </p><p>They’d even had those first few weeks of tentative bliss; Martin kept apologizing for bumping into Jon, and halfway through his voice would contort in a weird sort of realization that he was allowed to touch, and Jon would press a careful kiss to his mouth and the both of them would flush. </p><p>And then the letter arrived, and bunged it all up. Martin had turned back with a vague notion of having forgotten something and arrived just in time to snatch the lighter off the counter and set the paper ablaze. When Jon looked at him, with wide, weeping eyes, Martin was a shade transparent, and then in the next moment he wasn’t. A trick of the light, maybe, but his hands have been cold ever since and Jon doesn’t put much stock in coincidences these days.</p><p>He sets his plate down on the floor, carefully out of the way of his feet, and scrubs the heels of his hands against his closed eyes until his vision sparks and blooms behind his eyelids. Martin’s fork scrapes against his plate, halfway to a bite. His glasses are crooked again, the frames warped at some point so they never stay quite where he puts them, and Jon’s fingers twitch. “Martin.”</p><p>“What? Don’t tell me you’ve gone off pasta. I kept myself alive fine but I’m not exactly a professional chef, there’s only so many things I can make.” He sounds tetchy, nudging his glasses back into line with his knuckle. Fuck, Jon wants so many things.</p><p>“Your pasta is fine. We need to talk, Martin.”</p><p>“Oh.” Martin sets his own plate aside and then can’t decide what to do with his hands. He brushes them down his thighs, twists them uncomfortably in his lap, and then finally sets them on either side of himself on the couch and turns his head to face Jon. His eyes are dark and wide behind his glasses.</p><p>“Well? You going to talk, or was I supposed to continue that ominous sta- phrase on my own?”</p><p>“<i>Give me a second.</i> Look, it’s just...things have changed.” Jon sets his palm down on the couch between them, not touching Martin but just - putting it out there.</p><p>“Have they,” Martin says, incredulous.</p><p>“Don’t start.” He should’ve planned this better, but if he put it off any longer it would’ve just kept going on its own inertia, wrenching the gulf between them a little wider every day. Planning in advance has never really been his strong suit, anyway. Jon wonders if the gap between the ill-matched seat cushions they’re sitting on is too apt a metaphor, and Martin sighs in the loud way he gets when he thinks Jon is being a perfect moron.</p><p>“Christ, Jon, the world almost ended. If I hadn’t come back when I did - ”</p><p>“But you did come back. And the statement is gone, you told me yourself there’s no way anyone can read it now. We’re not - not out of the woods entirely, but we’ve got a moment to relax.” Jon’s voice is going nervous and indignant in equal measures. He stabs his hand out across the void and wraps his fingers around Martin’s. “Look, we both know it’s not over, and we can’t stay here forever, but we have time for once, and I don’t want to spend it dancing around each other like we’re made of glass, and I don’t think you want that either. I don’t want to be afraid any more.”</p><p>Whatever tip of righteous fury had been rising in Martin, it deflates over a handful of moments until he’s slumped back against the scratchy fabric of the couch and staring up at the ceiling with stormcloud eyes. The ash tin on the shelf looms over them, and Jon is suddenly swamped with a powerful urge to wing it out the window and watch the contents drift into the autumn wind. Instead it sits unbothered like some stupid punishment; for who, he couldn’t say.</p><p>“I don’t want you to get hurt because of me,” Martin says, low.</p><p>“What?” Last week Jon sliced his hand open trying to cube a potato. The blood splattered over the chopping board and onto the floor and he had to bin the gory vegetables, but the wound stitched itself closed in minutes. But he supposes that’s not quite the sort of thing Martin’s talking about.</p><p>“I just - sometimes it terrifies me how easy it all feels,” Martin says. “I’m braced for it all to go sideways again.” He’s still staring at the ceiling, but his hand in Jon’s feels colder somehow, the heat leaching out of it.</p><p>“I wouldn’t exactly categorize the last few years as <i>easy</i>,” Jon mutters, and Martin scoffs in agreement, and then for a moment the cottage is quiet. Outside it’s starting to rain. “You’re scared?” Jon prods after a moment. He feels the buzz of compulsion in his throat before he can stop it, and Martin squeezes his fingers tighter.</p><p>“Jon, I’m <i>petrified</i>,” Martin snorts. “There’s monsters around every corner, and the world nearly ended, and I still can’t convince myself all of this is real half the time, that I’m not going to turn a corner and walk into Peter Lukas telling me this has all been an illusion just so I know what I’m missing. Sometimes I think I’m going to touch you and you’re going to melt into fog.”</p><p>Martin’s hands are always cold now, every time Jon brushes up against him. He never seems to mind or even notice, but Jon holds him tighter and wills some of his own warmth to pass into Martin.</p><p>“I’m scared too,” he admits after a moment. He has to pause there to choke back the wave of horror in his gut that threatens to sweep him under any time he acknowledges it. “I’m scared of what I’m turning into, and that I can’t go back, and that I might hurt you, or Jonah will come up with something else, or some<i>one</i> else and it’ll all be for nothing. But I don’t think it’s a weakness. I think it’s what’s keeping me human.” He catches Martin’s eyes and smiles, a little damp around the edges. Two strange creatures, playing at house together. It sounds like a bad fairy tale.</p><p>“And anyway, you’ve still got my lighter, right? So if any more evil statements turn up, you can handle it while I go bury my head in the mud. We can start a collection. This place could use more decoration.” Martin laughs, sniffling and weak. His thumb presses into the dip between Jon’s knuckles.</p><p>“You make it sound so simple.”</p><p>“If it helps, I think this sort of thing is hardly strange in a new relationship?”</p><p>"Oh - oh of course, right, that normal stage in a new relationship where your evil ex manager tries to make you start the apocalypse! That old walnut!" Martin's voice is going high, less with panic than huffy indignation, and it settles warm in Jon's chest. He'd be disgusted at how soppy he's gotten lately, if it weren't for the fact he's too damn happy under everything to care.</p><p>"Chestnut. Not walnut." Martin gives him a look that conveys 'do not even start with that all-knowing bullshit when I'm working myself up', and Jon can't stifle the smile any longer. He clambers forward on awkward knees until he’s right next to Martin, has to look down at him slightly to meet his eyes, and kisses him soundly.</p><p>Martin melts in an instant, blushing under Jon’s thin fingers on his face. God, he’s warm everywhere Jon touches him. Jon lets his hands drag over the skin of Martin’s cheeks, feeling the heat bleed in after him. Good. Martin breathes in and out against Jon’s mouth, shaking still, but the edges of his lips are turning up into a pleased little smile.</p><p>He gets Martin back against the corner of the couch, halfway leaning on top of him, and pushes his jaw harder into the kiss until Martin opens up underneath. Kissing like this, wet and dragging with his hands curled into Martin’s hair and Martin tentatively holding his arms, winds his chest hot and tight. Jon breaks away with a gasp. “We should - we have a bed,” he says. </p><p>Martin blinks up at him, cross-eyed behind his lenses, and Jon has to kiss him again. They do have a bed. They also have a couch big enough for two, with some squishing and a little lack of personal space, and Martin’s soft hands tentatively push under Jon’s shirt, and all thoughts of stopping to relocate are summarily chased out of Jon’s mind. Martin’s still cold; everything else can be dealt with later.</p><p>Jon reaches his fingers under Martin’s jumper and gets a yelp and a too-hard bite on his lip for his trouble. His reproving glare is just met with Martin, a bit dazed, squirming both towards and away from the touch. He’s shivering like he’s just come in from the cold and bluster outside, cheeks flushing like the wind’s been biting at him.</p><p>“I want to suck you off,” Jon blurts. He knows for a fact he can’t compel himself to speak - he tried once, on a bored afternoon at the Archives, and just gave himself a headache with the effort - but sometimes he has his suspicions. </p><p>“Oh. Um - alright?” Martin says. His fingers are nervous in the fabric of Jon’s shirt, and his hips squirm underneath them. His cock is hard against Jon’s stomach, hot and solid.</p><p>“I don’t have to if you’re that horrified by the idea.”</p><p>“No! No it’s just, er, been a minute.” Martin nods, a ghosting smile creeping across his face, and Jon sinks down Martin’s body, fumbling open the button on his trousers and hiking them down far enough to get his mouth on Martin’s cock. Suddenly he wants his mouth everywhere on Martin, anywhere he’s allowed. Martin flushes violently and stares down at Jon through foggy lenses, and his hands pat, trembling, into Jon’s hair, but his knees cant wider and Jon takes the implicit permission as it lays. </p><p>It’s been awhile since Jon’s done this or anything vaguely adjacent; between his general off-putting antisocial tendencies and the living hell of the last few years, his dry spell is understandable, he feels. Maybe he should be more nervous, but all he knows is the eager thrum making his hands shake on Martin’s hips and the taste of him on his tongue.</p><p>“Fuck,” Martin whispers. His hands card into Jon’s hair and he’s pulling mindlessly, just searching for something to anchor himself. Jon moans around the length of him and sinks deeper. It fills his mouth awkwardly, and not one part of him seems to mind.</p><p>Martin gasps out when Jon gets his tongue involved, and Jon finds that every goal he’s had in his life is replaced with <i>more of that, please.</i> His own cock is aggressively making its presence known in the confines of his trousers, grinding against the sofa, and his jaw is starting to cramp, and there’s saliva smearing over his chin. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the hiccupy gasp in Martin’s voice and the dull nails scraping over his scalp. He leans into it, and finds them moaning in sync, and Martin spills over his tongue in a blurred instant. Jon feels a little smug for it, that Martin fell apart so easily for him. The skin under his hands is fever hot. He swallows and feels an answering pulse, weaker this time.</p><p>“Jon - Jon.” The tone in Martin’s voice is urgent and the mindless groping in Jon’s hair turns pointed, and Jon lets the softening cock slide out of his mouth to scramble up the couch. Martin’s nervous hands guide him until they’re lying properly together and Jon can sneak his own fingers under Martin’s jumper to paw at his soft stomach.</p><p>“Was that okay?” he asks against Martin’s jaw, smearing the mess around. Martin’s voice practically squeaks when he answers.</p><p>“Jon, yes, it was - what do you want me to do?” Always the giver, Martin. Jon’s stomach feels tied up around everything he wants, but right now the answer is simple. He leans his weight further down, blanketing Martin again, and revels in the warmth and friction. Martin’s legs tangle with his, and he pants in Jon’s ear, and Jon works himself off just like that, groaning against Martin’s neck and thinking of blessedly nothing beyond the heat of Martin’s breath against his ear and the startled, hitching gasps he makes when Jon grinds down.</p><p>After, he makes to roll to the side, but there’s barely enough room with the two of them stacked, and Martin catches him with a solid, warm arm around the waist anyway. Jon’s going to be unbearably sticky in his trousers soon, and the flush of embarrassment around messing around on the couch like teenagers will surely set in soon, but Martin is breathing damp and hot against his throat and Jon feels stupidly blissed out and content. The old flannel blanket that lives on the back of the sofa is miraculously still there, and Jon tugs it down over them. </p><p>“Should clean up,” Martin mumbles against him, in no hurry to move, and Jon winds one of his curls around a finger. In the low light of the cottage, the coppery tint is dark and warm.</p>
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